The list of assets Rio Tinto Plc is seeking to sell keeps getting longer. So does the list of banks getting a slice of Rio Tinto’s business.

Reuters

Investment banks ranging from the best-known names on Wall Street to small Australian boutiques are on the roster as Rio Tinto, under new leadership, embarks on a program to sell off assets.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, the mining giant is looking to sell the 57% stake in Ivanhoe Australia Ltd., which produces copper and gold, owned by unit Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. Ivanhoe Australia has a market value of around A$148.7 million (US$156.5 million).

“The power is secured, first ore produced and the concentrator switched on and we are on schedule for first commercial production in the first half of the year. We continue to work together with all stakeholders including the Government of Mongolia to bring the benefits of Oyu Tolgoi to all parties,” said a Rio spokesman.

A report Wednesday on Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, said Rio was considering a plan to shut the $6 billion mine as part of negotiations with the government over changes to a 2009 investment agreement that governs the project. Several Mongolian politicians have made calls to increase the government’s payout from the project, changes Rio has resisted. Shutting the mine would halt payments the government receives from import duties on equipment and would delay its eventual dividend payments from the mine.

The fallout from a costly copper deal in Africa last year by Canada’s Barrick Gold Corp. is giving China a chance to strengthen its gold mining footprint in the continent.

Barrick said Thursday it is in talks to sell all or part of its Tanzania-focused gold operation, African Barrick Gold PLC for as much as $3.9 billion to China National Gold Group Corp., a state-owned miner and refiner.

Fresh after securing a deal to buy the London Metal Exchange earlier this month, Hong Kong’s ambitious bourse is now trying for another goal–a dual-currency stock on its exchange.

A year ago, Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. released details of how a company could list in both local Hong Kong dollars and the Chinese yuan, and in January added facilities so investors without access to enough yuan can still trade yuan stocks listed on the bourse.

But to date, few yuan equity products have been issued with just an exchange-traded fund that tracks the price of gold, a real estate investment trust controlled by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, and 23 yuan bonds, popularly known as dim sum bonds.

Gold has had a long twelve-year long rally, and after finishing 2011 up 12%, it’s finally showing signs of a slow-down in 2012, with spot gold up around 5% year-to-date. Investors are digesting data that suggests that the global economy could finally be improving, and more importantly, that U.S. monetary stimulus could be coming to an end.

Gold had a particularly rocky run in April after the Federal Reserve dampened hopes of further monetary stimulus by hinting that rates could rise before 2014, which sent gold prices tumbling. Before that, hopes of QE3 were keeping the yellow metal’s prices buoyant as investors saw weakening paper currencies and inflation as an incentive to hold gold.

He wasn’t alone in the pain, but the year was a setback for Sprott, who only has one other losing year over the past decade and an annualized return of 19% over that period.

But, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sprott said he isn’t going to back down from his bets on gold and silver that have made him loads of money over the years — before costing him dearly in 2011.

The lackluster performance of gold miners’ shares compared with the stellar performance of the metal they dig up has been something of a head-scratcher.

Evy Hambro, joint chief investment officer of BlackRock’s natural resources equities team, has opined the divergence has to do with these companies’ poor record on returns–which is why he is leading a charge for gold producers to hand shareholders more of the cash they are sitting on. Companies may have other ideas.

What, if anything, can an investor glean from George Soros’s decision to buy into a big jeweler’s IPO in Hong Kong?

As Dow Jones Newswires reported Wednesday, Mr. Soros is buying $40 million worth of shares in the up to $2.8 billion IPO of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Ltd.

Though it’s small change for Mr. Soros, it’s making us take notice for a couple of reasons. First, it’s the most high profile investment his hedge fund has made in a Hong Kong company since it set up shop in the city last year. According to the Securities and Futures Commission, Soros Fund Management Hong Kong Ltd. now has 21 licensed representatives on staff, including Mr. Soros’s son Robert. The fund also invested in the Hong Kong IPO of automaker China Zhengtong Corp. last year.

Hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson has sold down one of its ill-timed investments, and cut holdings in the popular gold exchange-traded fund.

According to a quarterly snapshot of his investment h0ldings, Paulson owned 20.3 million shares of the GLD gold ETF as of Sept. 30, compared to 31.5 million shares he held as of June 30.

Paulson also trimmed to 15.2 million his shares of Hewlett-Packard, whose stock price has taken a hit since Paulson bought into the tech companyearlier this year. Paulson held 23.5 million H-P shares three months earlier.

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Dealpolitik is Ronald Barusch's strategic look at deals currently making the headlines as well as the major forces at work in the deal-making world. He was a M&A lawyer with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom for over 30 years. He retired in 2010 after 25 years as a partner at the firm. Click here for his current and archived columns.